Washington hid damaging Vietnam finding

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Two people discuss politics amidst a sea of crosses to commemorate each member for the US military killed in Iraq, 30 October 2005 on the beach in Santa Monica, CA. The crosses are set up every Sunday by volunteers and members of "Veterans for Peace."Photo: AFP

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The US National Security Agency has kept secret a 2001 finding
by its own historian that its officers deliberately distorted
critical intelligence during the Tonkin Gulf episode that helped
precipitate the Vietnam War.

The historian's conclusion was the first serious accusation that
the agency's intercepts were falsified to support the belief North
Vietnamese ships attacked US destroyers on August 4, 1964, two days
after a previous clash.

Most historians have concluded in recent years there was no
second attack, but they have assumed the agency's intercepts were
unintentionally misread, not purposely altered. The research by
Robert Hanyok, the agency's historian, was detailed four years ago
in an in-house article that remains secret, in part because agency
officials feared its release might prompt uncomfortable comparisons
with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq,
according to an intelligence official.

Matthew Aid, an independent historian who has discussed Mr
Hanyok's Tonkin Gulf research with agency and CIA officials, said
he had decided to speak publicly about the findings because he
believed they should have been released long ago.

"This material is relevant to debates we as Americans are having
about the war in Iraq and intelligence reform," he said.

Mr Hanyok believed the initial misinterpretation of North
Vietnamese intercepts was probably an honest mistake. But after
months of detective work in the agency's archives, Mr Hanyok
concluded mid-level agency officials discovered the error almost
immediately, but covered it up and doctored documents so that they
appeared to provide evidence of an attack.

"Rather than come clean about their mistake, they helped launch
the United States into a bloody war that would last for 10 years,"
Mr Aid said.

President Lyndon Johnson cited the August 4 episode to persuade
Congress in 1964 to authorise military action in Vietnam, despite
doubts about the attack that arose almost immediately. Asked about
Mr Hanyok's research, an agency spokesman, Don Weber, said the
agency intended to release the material late next month but delayed
the release "in an effort to be consistent with our preferred
practice of providing the public [with] a more contextual
perspective".

The intelligence official said agency staff historians first
pushed for public release in 2002, but the idea lost momentum in
2003, in part because of the concerns about parallels with Iraq
intelligence. Mr Aid said he had heard from other intelligence
officials the same explanation for the delay in public release.

Robert McNamara, who as defence secretary played a central role
in the Tonkin Gulf affair, said in an interview he had never been
told of evidence intelligence had been altered to shore up the
scant evidence of a North Vietnamese attack.

"That really is surprising to me," said Mr McNamara, 89. Mr
Hanyok said Mr McNamara had used the altered intercepts in 1964 and
1968 in testimony before Congress. "I think they ought to make all
the material public, period," he said.

The supposed second North Vietnamese attack, on the US
destroyers Maddox and C. Turner Joy, played a significant role in
history. Johnson responded by ordering retaliatory airstrikes on
North Vietnam and obtaining congressional backing for war.

Two people discuss politics amidst a sea of crosses to commemorate each member for the US military killed in Iraq, 30 October 2005 on the beach in Santa Monica, CA. The crosses are set up every Sunday by volunteers and members of &quot;Veterans for Peace.&quot;

Two people discuss politics amidst a sea of crosses to commemorate each member for the US military killed in Iraq, 30 October 2005 on the beach in Santa Monica, CA. The crosses are set up every Sunday by volunteers and members of &quot;Veterans for Peace.&quot;